1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a wireless communication system and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for data channel resource allocation in a multi-carrier wireless system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, Machine-to-Machine/Internet Of Things (M2M/IoT) services, in which various nearby things are connected together through networks to enable easy acquisition and transfer of information at any time and place, have become a key issue for next generation communication markets. At first, sensor and Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) networks mainly targeting local regions have been used for M2M communication. Later, as purposes and characteristics of applications diversified, various other wired/wireless networks have been used for M2M communication. In recent years, M2M communication based on mobile communication networks has attracted attention in consideration of mobility of things, broad service areas covering islands, mountains and seas, ease of network operation and maintenance, security for highly reliable data transmission, and quality of service guarantees. In M2M communication, mainly small data packets are transmitted and the transmission period tends to be very long. As the number of terminals or devices in a cell reaches about 30,000, a base station, which normally handles several hundreds of terminals, may now have to double the number of terminals to handle.
Along with this trend, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a representative European standardization body for mobile communication, conducted a feasibility study on M2M communication in 2005, and has been actively engaged in M2M standardization since 2008 under the name of Machine Type Communications (MTC).
In addition to M2M equipment, regular user equipment having various applications may execute a background application that periodically or non-periodically exchanges very small amounts of data with a corresponding application server. In this case, the user equipment transmits very small packets. As most systems have been designed to efficiently transfer large amounts of data, transmission of small data packets causes degradation of frequency efficiency. Hence, it is necessary to develop a new transmission scheme that can accommodate a large number of user equipments transmitting small data packets based on existing systems.